


we were born for better days

by fireflyslove



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Darth Vader Redemption, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Handwavery, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Luke and Leia don't know they're twins, Obi-Wan raises Luke, Obi-Wan saves Vader from being Vader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-25 13:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14379696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyslove/pseuds/fireflyslove
Summary: Obi-Wan attempts to save Vader from the Dark Side, but the Rebellion, especially Bail Organa and Ahsoka Tano, are not going to believe that after a decade of terrorizing the galaxy, Anakin Skywalker can possibly be saved.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have not seen any of Star Wars Rebels, so everything in this fic is based on the prequel movies and The Clone Wars TV show. 
> 
> Beware that this fic is an exercise in absurdity and I'm well aware that Vader/Anakin was probably beyond redemption except for what happened in ROTJ. But given that this is fanfiction, I DO WHAT I WANT and if it ends up being slightly OOC, I DO WHAT I WANT. 
> 
> I can be found complaining on Tumblr @anakinslefthand

Slightly less than a dozen years after the fall of the Republic, Obi-Wan Kenobi found himself in a familiar situation, only this time, he was responsible for the welfare of not one but _two_ younglings. Only one of them was actually his ward, but given the other’s dual royal status and true parentage, she might be the more dangerous of the two. As it was, she was currently dangling rather precipitously over the top bunk of the cabin the two children were sharing on this transport, taunting the boy on the lower bunk. Apparently, she hadn’t taken notice of his entrance, because she nearly fell off the bunk when Obi-Wan cleared his throat.

“Leia, what would your father say?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Sorry, Master Kenobi,” Leia said, hastily sitting upright on the bed, and narrowly avoiding bumping her head on the cabin’s ceiling.

“Oh, Uncle Ben, it’s fine,” Luke said placatingly from the bottom bunk, “she wasn’t really bothering me.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Luke,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s a sad fact that Leia comes from a powerful family, and as such, has powerful enemies. The wrong word in the wrong place could do catastrophic damage, and you never know to whom you might be speaking or who might be listening, unseen.”

As he said it, he thought himself paranoid, but the last days of the Republic and the infancy of the Empire had bred a deep-seated fear in Obi-Wan. Taking responsibility for raising the son of Darth Vader hadn’t done much to dislodge that fear. He sometimes wondered if he should have gone with his first instinct, to hide the child on Tatooine with Owen and Beru Lars, but then… no, even Anakin couldn’t be so stupid as to not look for his child on his own home planet under his own name. It had been hard enough to see Bail Organa take the girl child with him, and Obi-Wan saw Leia on a regular basis.

The children were not aware of their parentage or of their relation to each other, but they had formed a fast friendship from their first meeting nearly eight years ago, and now when they were together, they were nearly inseparable.

“I understand, Master Kenobi,” Leia said, her eyes betraying a gravity far beyond her years. She reminded him uncomfortably of Anakin at that age, at once strangely serious and overtly emotional.

“It’s alright, Leia,” Obi-Wan said, his voice gentling. “It’s time for the two of you to go to bed, the night cycle started over an hour ago and we’re going to be docking before it ends.” He gave both of them a hug, ruffling their hair, and walked out, palming the control for the light as he passed through the door.

Luke and Leia were not Anakin or Padme, but it was hard for Obi-Wan not to compare them, especially as the twins passed into the age where Obi-Wan had known their parents. Luke had so much of his mother, a soothing diplomatic exterior over a spine of steel, and Leia of her father, unplumbed depths of emotion, a fiery temper, and a fierce loyalty to those she loved.

Obi-Wan had raised Anakin from the age of 10, and although he did not regard raising Luke as a do-over of that experience, he had learned hard lessons from it. Luke was not Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Luke was his… it was hard not to use the word _son_. Luke thought that Obi-Wan was the brother of his father, a man who had died in the last days of the Republic. Which was a close enough version to the truth for six-year-old Luke, but Obi-Wan knew that the day was rapidly approaching when the truth would come out, not only about Luke, but about Leia and it was not a day he was looking forward to.

It was late, as he had told the children, but he was restless, so he went up to the bridge. The night cycle meant the lights up here were low, the monitors dimmed, but the bright streaks of hyperspace gave the room a ghostly light. He took a seat facing one of the windows, and rested his elbows on the work surface, idly watching the non-view outside.

A cough from the darkened corner of the bridge a few minutes later made him jump nearly out of his skin.

“Force, Ahsoka, you can’t do that,” he said, turning to face the Togruta.

“Your senses are getting dull in your old age, Master,” Ahsoka said.

Obi-Wan chuckled dryly. “You may be right about that,” he said. “I need more practice, but we’ve been in space with only the two of us for so long that it’s been easy to let it lapse.”

“How long have you been away?” Ahsoka asked. She was peripherally involved in the Rebellion, at least as far as Obi-Wan was aware. Bail and Mon Mothma were fairly secretive about the whereabouts of former Jedi in regards to the Alliance.

“Six months, give or take,” Obi-Wan said. “I was going to meet with an, ah, well, an arms dealer, and they were moving bases, so I had to bring Luke with me. The deal with that slimy git went sideways, and we ended up on the run for a few months, until I could find enough funds to get to a planet that wasn’t Imperial, and then we found Leia. I’m not entirely certain how she got there, but by the time I found her, her guards were dead and she was hiding in an alley in rags. That was about a week ago.”

“You found Leia?” Ahsoka said, jumping to her feet. “She’s been missing for more than two months. No one could figure out where she had disappeared to. That’s what _I’ve_ been doing. I snuck onto this ship to get a ride back to the Alliance to give an update of… nothing, I guess. But you just stumble upon her. I guess she has her father’s knack for finding good luck in unusual situations.”

“Fat lot of good that did him,” Obi-Wan said darkly, regarding the hyperspace corridor again.

“True,” Ahsoka said, “but you know he made his own choices and nothing you could have done would change them.”

“I do,” Obi-Wan said. “But there’s always that little voice that says, ‘what if’.”

“Regrets are for the young,” Ahsoka said.

Obi-Wan turned back to look at her, “You’re not exactly old yourself.”

“Did I say I didn’t have regrets?”

“No, I suppose you didn’t.”

Ahsoka opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was stopped by the sudden shuddering of the ship. The engines screamed and there was the sound of metal tearing from the aft section.

“Shit,” Obi-Wan said, slamming a hand down on the button for emergency measures to come into effect. The lights on the bridge flared to full brightness, and off in the distance he heard the blast doors closing, presumably blocking off the sections that were exposed to space.

“What the fuck was that?” Ahsoka said, powering up the nearest monitor, and looking for a systems report.

“The hyperdrive engine tore itself off,” Obi-Wan said. “And looks like it took the entire aft section of the ship with it. All the cargo… but none of the passengers. And it took the sub-light engines with it. All we have are steering thrusters. And… oh shit…”

“What?!” Ahsoka said. Obi-Wan has never been one to curse unless the situation is truly dire.

“Look where we are,” he said, turning the screen so she can see it.

They’re sitting smack in the middle of not only an Imperial system, but one that is currently, according to the ship’s report, hosting the Emperor. The transport they’re on is a smuggler’s ship, the captain had only agreed to take Obi-Wan and the children on for an exorbitant fee, and Obi-Wan was pretty sure that the captain would sell them to the Empire without a second thought.

“How much time do we have?” Ahsoka asked, mostly to herself

“None,” Obi-Wan said, pointing out the window to the three ships coming toward them. “And it just got worse.”

Both of them can feel it, the malignant presence in the Force that is Darth Vader. He was on one of those ships, and he would have absolutely no qualms about killing either of them.

“We need to get the children into hiding,” Ahsoka said. “Neither of them knows, correct?”

Obi-Wan nodded, “Go hide them, I’ll distract Vader.”

“He might well kill you,” Ahsoka said.

“I know, but for Luke and Leia’s sakes, they need to be as far away from his humanly possible,” Obi-Wan said. “There’s the captain’s yacht just under the bridge, it’s small, but it’s hyperspace capable. Get them both in there and get to Yavin as soon as you can. If you don’t hear from me… don’t come looking.”

Ahsoka pulled him into an embrace, something the Jedi would have frowned on, but then, neither of them were Jedi anymore, were they?

The only docking port left on the ship was just behind the bridge, and Obi-Wan was going to have to distract Vader for long enough for Ahsoka and the twins to get away. So he took up a position just opposite of the door when the docking lights began to spin, signaling the approach of the Imperial ships. The ship’s status report had shown that most of the blast doors on the ship had closed, and Ahsoka was going to have to cut her way through two to get to the children’s room. It also meant that Obi-Wan had limited escape routes, and that help or hindrance from the ship’s crew would not be coming, given that the only way for the blast doors to be opened was from the bridge itself, which had been suspiciously empty. That was suspect, but Obi-Wan did not have time to consider the topic. The sounds of the transport’s docking clamps fastening onto the Imperial ship echoed through the empty corridor where Obi-Wan stood. The airlock blared a siren once, twice, thrice, and then opened. Smoke rolled out into the corridor, and then Obi-Wan saw him.

He was far taller than he had been in his previous life, the Emperor must have outfitted him with longer prosthetics. The all-black armor surrounded by a fluttering black cape was indeed intimidating, as well as the sick red glow of the lightsaber in his hand, a lightsaber whose hilt resembled the one Obi-Wan had taken from him on Mustafar. A small squad of Stormtroopers stood behind him, but they barely registered on Obi-Wan’s consciousness. Instead, he was waiting for the moment when Vader saw him.

He only recognized it by the slight incline of Vader’s head, and then the downward stroke of his lightsaber. Obi-Wan deflected it easily, it hadn’t been meant as a true killing blow, he knew how Anakin had fought, and that was only the opening sally. Vader would expect him to stand and fight, a true Jedi.

But Obi-Wan had seen too much in the last decade and a half to be a Jedi anymore, so he did the opposite, he turned and ran, dashing off into the bowels of the ship, away from where the children were. He was immediately rewarded by the sound of boots on metal as Vader ran after him, leaving the Stormtroopers without direction.

“Follow him, you idiots,” the leader shouted, and Obi-Wan’s hope rose. Only a few minutes, and then Ahsoka and Luke and Leia would be away and he could finish this once and for all.

 

_If only it were actually that easy._


	2. Chapter 2

Obi-Wan realized he was in trouble a few moments after passing through the first open blast door. Which, of course, shouldn’t have been open. On the other side was a man dressed in what passed for a uniform amongst the smugglers of the galaxy, sturdy pants, shirt, vest, and boots all in various shades of brown and beige, not unsimilar to the clothes Obi-Wan wore himself. He was holding a blaster, pointed directly at Obi-Wan.

“Captain Saris,” Obi-Wan said, pulling up short.

“I really am sorry about this,” Saris said, “but they offered me a great deal of money.”

“I am sorry you fell for it,” Obi-Wan said. “They’re not going to pay you.”

“You don’t think the Empire keeps its promises?” Saris asked.

“I don’t think Darth Vader likes witnesses,” Obi-Wan replied.

“Darth Vader?” Saris said, sounding suddenly panicked.

“Yes, did you not know?” Obi-Wan said. “I’m a very wanted man, you understand.”

“They just said… oh shit, shit, shit,” Saris said. “What can we do?”

“Shoot them,” Obi-Wan said

The conversation had taken a suspiciously long time considering the fact that Obi-Wan was being followed by an angry Sith Lord and a complement of Stormtroopers, and when he turned around, he found the Stormtroopers staring at him, as if waiting for the conversation to finish, Vader nowhere to be seen.

The next moment, a blaster bolt flew over his shoulder and struck the lead one square in the chest, felling him immediately. The following minutes were a confusion of fists, blasters, and falling Stormtroopers. At some point, a Stormtrooper kicked him in the hand, causing him to drop his ’saber. Obi-Wan came out of it with his back to the blast door to the next section, firing a blaster at empty air filled with smoke. The corridor was incredibly narrow and the space too tightly packed to allow for him to call the lightsaber back to him in the middle of the melee, but now there was no movement.

The piled bodies of Stormtroopers nearly blocked his exit, and somewhere in the middle of them lay Captain Saris. He called the lightsaber back to him, and placed it back on his belt, checked the charge of the blaster, and holstered that as well. An uncivilized weapon, to be sure, but sometimes in this life a visible lightsaber would give away more information about him than he would like. He actually carried two, the other concealed in a pocket, sewn shut against the day he’d need it, or the day he gave it to Luke.

The sound of running boots, children’s screams, and the _bzzzzt_ sound of lightsabers coming into contact came from the upper deck and Obi-Wan scrambled across the pile of plastoid and limp bodies to get to the stairs. The upper deck was more spacious and there was actually room for a proper lightsaber duel up here. Not that those were common these days, but Obi-Wan still took first impressions of a room based on needs he had internalized during the Clone Wars.

Ahsoka stood in front the children, a determined expression on her face. Across the room stood the menacing figure of Darth Vader, in one hand his own blood-red saber and in the other one of Ahsoka’s blades. He was making a speech and seemed not to notice Obi-Wan’s entrance.

“-Should have given up when you left the Jedi,” Vader said, seeming to come to an end.

“Are you quite done?” Ahsoka said.

“You’re not going to turn to the Dark Side,” Vader said, almost in disgust. “You’re too afraid of its power.”

“Anakin, look at what the Dark Side did to you,” Ahsoka said, gesturing to the suit that Vader wore.

“The Dark Side didn’t do this to me, Obi-Wan did this to me,” Vader said, somehow pushing even more venom into his modulated voice.

“The Dark Side is what kept you alive, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. Vader rounded on him and Obi-Wan hoped Ahsoka saw the chance she was getting. “You should have died.”

“Because you left me for dead there, burning,” Vader snarled.

“You gave me no choice!” Obi-Wan said, bringing his lightsaber up to block Vader’s. Anakin had never been a master of dual wielding lightsabers, and the second one still seemed to hamper him. They clashed again and again, the _ksssst_ sounds of locked sabers echoing across the now empty room. Ahsoka’s, Luke’s, and Leia’s Force presences grew ever dimmer and then disappeared as the dropship got away and into hyperspace.

“There was always a choice,” Vader said. “You could have joined me, saved Padme, saved my child. Instead you betrayed me!”

“You killed all the Younglings, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “You were already so far gone there was no hope left!”

The white bladed lightsaber came down and sent Obi-Wan’s saber in a wild spin out of his hands and off into the darkness. The glow from the red saber lit Vader’s mask, highlighting the skull-like visage. Obi-Wan scrambled back, reaching out for his saber, but it was going to be too late. He pulled the blaster out of its holster and fired blindly at Vader. Somehow, even through two lightsabers, it hit its mark, the faceplate of the mask. It shattered, leaving a huge gaping hole. Underneath, pale white skin surrounded a baleful yellow eye. Vader recoiled from the shock, and Obi-Wan heard his respirator trying to compensate for the sudden change in pressure. He dropped both of the sabers, and all three, Ahsoka’s, Vader’s, and his own came flying back to Obi-Wan.

Vader stumbled back until he hit the bulkhead, gasping for breath. His visible eye narrowed sullenly. “Here we are again. Are you going to leave me to die here again?” he asked, voice merely a whisper without the modulation.

“No, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “This time I don’t have to save Padme and your child.”

“Don’t call me that,” Vader hissed, slowly sliding down the wall. “And don’t you speak her name. You killed her.”

“Is that what he told you?” Obi-Wan asked. “The Sith always lie, always to their own advantage, you should know that by now, Anakin.”

“She died and you didn’t do anything to stop it,” Vader said.

“She wasn’t dying. She should not have died, you should have,” Obi-Wan said, kneeling down next to Vader’s now prone form. “Darth Plagueis, you have heard of him?”

Vader gave no response.

“Your master did not tell you _how_ Darth Plagueis sustained life, did he? No? I didn’t think so. The reversal of death is not possible, Anakin. It requires something else to die, some _one_ else to die. And that person must be intimately bonded to the person being saved. It takes an incredibly strong Force bond to make that kind of connection.”

“No,” Vader said, a low hiss.

“Yes, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “Darth Sidious took Padme’s life and exchanged it for yours.”

“He… you… no…,” Vader said, and for the briefest moment, Obi-Wan saw his eye flash blue.

“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” Obi-Wan said.

Vader’s face contorted into a mask of rage, and he screamed, “Liar!”.

Obi-Wan was not unaware of the similarities between what was happening here and what had transpired on Mustafar a decade ago. But now, seeing what Anakin had become, Obi-Wan was struck with a sudden determination to save his former Padawan.

“I have never lied to you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said.

Vader said nothing, but the toll of his armor being so damaged was clearly showing on his face. His eye glazed over and he slumped forward a few moments later. Obi-Wan stuffed the lightsabers into his pockets, reholstered the blaster, and slung Vader’s limp form over his shoulders. Vader was heavier than Anakin had been, the prosthetics and armor and life support systems nearly doubling his weight, but Obi-Wan lifted him as if he weighed almost nothing. The only way off this ship was in the one that Vader and the Stormtroopers had come in, and Obi-Wan hoped to all the gods of the galaxy that it was hyperspace-capable.

He entered it cautiously, there might still be a guard left behind, but it appeared to be empty. Obi-Wan dropped Vader into the co-pilot’s chair, a gesture that echoed a motion he had done dozens of times during the Wars, and sending a chill down his spine. Satisfied that Vader wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, he returned to the now derelict transport. The escape pods for the bridge were stocked with emergency rations, and he raided all six of them, stuffing them in a bag.

At the last moment he decided to check the children’s room for something they might have left behind, and was glad he had. On Leia’s bunk sat her comm, the one that was a direct link to Alderaan. Powerful and expensive, it was also a Rebellion secret that such a device even existed. From Luke’s bunk he pulled the boy’s toy X-wing from between the sheets. He stuck both of the items in his one remaining empty pocket and quickly returned to the Imperial ship. The transport was drifting in space, and they were smack in the middle of Imperial territory.

Getting back to it was easy, but undocking it from the transport proved more difficult. Obi-Wan cursed creatively at the dashboard until he finally initiated the right sequence and the airlock slammed shut. The ship jettisoned the transport and its own engines purred to life. Obi-Wan thought this must be Vader’s own private ship, it handled much like Anakin’s starfighter had _after_ the unsanctioned modifications that Obi-Wan never acknowledged he knew about. It moved quickly, and it was hyperspace-capable after all.

Now… where to go? Obi-Wan thought for almost too long, another ship showed on the edge of the radar. He punched in the first coordinates that came to mind and punched the hyperspace drive.

The streaks of hyperspace showed in the windows of the cockpit, and Obi-Wan sat back, sighed, and took a deep breath. What was he going to do with a Sith Lord who surely had a tracking chip on him, had a Force bond with the Emperor, and probably still wanted to kill him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DO WHAT I WANT


End file.
